


Brought To You By The Letter S

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [45]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: A Death in the Family (arc), Adoption, Angst, Earth-3, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Family Secrets, Gen, Gotham Circus - Freeform, Humor, Jason is an endless fountain of angst, Mentions of kidnapping, Past Brainwashing, birth certificate, hero phone tree, legal documentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 04:39:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4990543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Owlman's training wasn't all obedience and pain management and the best way to sever any given body part in one blow. There were critical thinking skills in there; Talon was <em>designed</em> to operate semi-independently at need, even if Jason's leash had never been as long as his predecessor's. He'd had most of a year of involvement in wacky vigilante schemes since then. And he wasn't stupid.</p><p>So of course his attention fell on the obvious resource, lying discarded in the pile of useless items without sentimental value: Willis Todd's little black address book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brought To You By The Letter S

Being recognized in the street as _Jason Todd_ had been a shocker. He didn't keep his last name secret, but he didn't hand it out much, either, and most of the casual recognition he got was as the current Red Hood, when the helmet was on. Take it off, he was practically invisible. (That was the point of a mask, after all.)

He hadn't even really noticed he was near the building he'd lived in as a kid—Crime Alley was still his old stomping grounds, but he'd spent enough time there as Talon for all the personal associations from before to go a little blunt and dull, just from all the time he'd spent not acknowledging they'd ever existed.

And then Mrs. Walker had shouted out from her front window, _Jason Todd? Is that you?_ Mrs. Walker from-across-the-hall. Mom had always said she was good people.

Mom hadn't been the greatest judge of character, though.

He'd gone up to her apartment. Not without suspicion—Wayne might not have cared who he was besides Talon, but he was still the most likely person in the world to refer to him by his full name, and the sick sonuvabitch had already grabbed him from this neighborhood once, when he'd let his guard down—but he was armed and alert, and no place with glass windows to smash his way out through was going to hold him, if he had even a second to move.

Turned out there was no ambush. Just a cardboard box that felt like one.

There was a flash of Talon's cold rage when it turned out that she'd let the contents get leaked on, get wet _,_ get maybe _ruined,_ even as she blamed it on her landlord (skinflint old bastard that he'd always been), but he shoved it down before she could see a hint of it, and practically stuttered in the effort to thank her appropriately.

She might as well be a total stranger, but she'd still taken the trouble and space to save his family's things for seven years, on the off chance Jason Todd still existed and might come back.

Well, he existed again, and even if life insurance that had gone unpaid too long to claim and the deed to a single acre of land in Virginia—why had his dad even owned something like that?—wasn't much, there were _photos._ From before everything went to shit. Christmas when he was four, fuck, he'd almost forgotten. Dad had a Christmas bonus that year and they had an honest-to-god roast that almost got burned. And Mom had saved all his report cards, from back when he'd still been in school. Harley kept trying to get him to study; he couldn't go to real school with Owlman after him, silver lining to everything, but a GED was doable.

Because he was still a real person. He had documentation. He had a _birth certificate._

And now Jason propped his elbows on the table in the back room of the Circus safehouse, small heaps of documents and photographs forming a sort of barricade around him, and wished he'd decided to retreat to his private little closet of a bedroom for this, instead of cleverly setting up beside the back door, where people might wander through and give him a chance to tell them about the box of mementos without having to go up and _tell_ anyone, like he was assuming they'd care.

What _were_ the odds of him getting back some of his old life now, like this, after everything?

He'd avoided the old place when he was living on the street—compartmentalizing, he guessed—and it was a good thing, because if Mrs. Walker had seen him back then, before Owlman took him, and he'd taken this stuff and stashed it, it would be long destroyed by now. He almost wished—but no. He'd have looked through it back then, too; he'd still _know_ , it would just mean he didn't have any of this…stuff. And that he would have _known_ while Owlman was breaking him, and that…that could have been bad.

He'd glanced over the birth certificate carelessly, when he found it, noting the water damage philosophically, already moving it to an accessible corner of the 'useful' stack so he could wave it tauntingly at J if he came through later, and lord his superior documented status over the guy. _Jason Peter Todd_ , right there, black and white. Really real boy, suck it. But then he'd noticed.

The name listed for 'father' was Willis Todd, which was what he'd expected. It would say that even if it hadn't actually been true, probably; his parents had had an okay marriage as these things went, especially when he'd been little, before money got so tight. But.

The name listed for 'mother' was a water-damaged smudge that started with a perfectly legible _S._

'Catherine' did not start with an S.

Jason's breath had gone weird in his own ears, and it took him a couple of minutes forcing slow breaths, and then a couple of seconds dipping into Talon's cold, distant killing-headspace, to steady out. (Harley said that was a bad way to deal with panic attacks, but he only had so much patience for trying it her way.) Okay, logic: maybe Mom had been one of those people who always used their middle name, and her real first name had been Susan or something.

Next document in the box was their marriage license. Catherine Mary Keaney became Catherine Mary Todd two years before Jason was born. Or at least, before the date on the birth certificate; he was prepared to doubt everything now.

The back door opened suddenly in a rush of cool autumn air, and Jason's hands slammed down on his papers before they could blow to the floor.

He didn't even realize his face had stretched into a possessive snarl until he saw Croc ( _Waylon,_ he was supposed to call everybody by their actual names) stock-still in the doorway, a few feet away, very consciously _not_ snarling back, with his eyes just about as wide as the heavy ridges of scaly skin around them would allow.

Jason took a long breath, curling his fingers until they pushed his palms away from the tabletop, but before he could work up to standing straight or maybe apologizing (hey, he'd had a freak-out without coming anywhere near wounding _anybody_ ; that was goddamn _progress_ ), Jones had raised one of his plate-sized hands in a gesture that seemed more _it's okay, no worries_ than _stay back_ , which made some sense at least since Croc was the hardest of any of them to seriously injure and had less to be afraid of if Jason turned on him, and then stepped backward out the door again, and pulled it carefully shut.

He must've made good time around to the side entrance, because Jason had barely mechanically straightened the minor mess his hurried anti-wind-squish had caused, and definitely hadn't sat down again, before the door behind him, the one that led into the rest of the house, rattled carefully ajar. He turned around to watch as the faces of two clowns appeared in the gap—Harlequin first, and then Jokester just above her, no doubt plastered against her back out in the hall. They wore worried expressions that managed to be identical in spite of his disfigurement and her mask. Harlequin was in costume, J's hair was tied back; they'd been out working.

He could see them taking in the cardboard box and his paper ramparts, as well as the way he stood, with one hand still on the table surface, like he couldn't risk giving up his claim to the territory by letting go. Jason wasn't sure what his face looked like, but they decided pretty quickly he wasn't going to scream at them for intruding, or try to rip their faces off or anything.

Jokester sidled in first—maybe it was a leader thing, maybe he was just the one who'd moved first, or maybe he was back to protecting his people from the rabid Talon; who knew—with Harley right beside him. She kept moving until she cleared the door frame and then pushed the door to, but not all the way shut. With some people, he'd have thought they didn't dare be closed in with him, but both of them _had_ dared, plenty of times, when he was doing way worse than a little silent snarling, and he knew Harley well enough by now to know that this was her way of making sure he didn't feel locked into whatever conversation she was planning to have.

He'd resent how they kept treating him like a feral monster, except, well, they weren't _wrong._ Wondered how Croc had described it. Croc who was so human under the scaly hide.

It had been months since they'd needed to tiptoe like this, since he'd been so close to the edge in his own head. He'd been free for almost a _year_. Shouldn't he have put it behind him more than this, now? Was he going to be like this _forever,_ all broken edges and white-outs? Harley said a lot of it was PTSD. She said recovery wasn't a linear process. She said it was nothing to be ashamed of.

She could be stupid, sometimes. For somebody that smart.

"Jaybird," Jokester said after a few seconds. "What's up?" His eyes landed deliberately on the papers as he asked, and Jason rattled out a sigh.

The thing was, he hated how much of him was still Talon. Turned to violence and cold threat before anything else, could commit any atrocity without shaking hands or a sick stomach because a weapon had no use for guilt. Hated that part of himself more than anything, maybe more even than the twisted psychopath who'd done this to him, like he had the _right_ to just take people and carve them into the shapes he needed. But at the same time…it was so much easier to be Talon. Nothing could hurt Talon.

Not for long.

But he owed them an explanation. They'd taken him into their home, trusted him with their _daughter_ , the only thing they loved more than each other, and with everything and everyone else, and if he was going to start…reverting under stress…in their house, he had to let them know _why_.

He would _never_ hurt Ella. But he didn't understand why anyone _believed_ that.

Finally, he just picked up the fateful scrap of paper and crossed the room, stiff less with tension than with the need not to move like Talon in front of them, no matter what his body wanted, and thrust it at Jokester, tapping the _S_ as the man reached up to take it.

"Mom's name was Catherine," he said, looking at Harley's knees instead of anyone's face.

It didn't take either of them long to understand.

"Oh, _Jason,_ " said Harley, all gooey sympathy he couldn't quite face, and he turned away when she tried to give him a hug. She closed her hand on his forearm, though, and he relaxed into the pressure of it, steady as an anchor. She reached up with her other hand to strip off her mask, and said, like she understood why he wasn't up to hugging, "I'm sorry."

"It's gonna be okay," said Jokester, looking up from studying the paper.

"Catherine loved you," Harley told him, tightening her hand on his arm—like she'd known her, like she knew _anything_. Except she obviously knew exactly what he was thinking, and he closed his eyes and pulled away, making sure to be gentle about it so she wouldn't think he was angry.

"Yeah," he said.

Because that was the thing, wasn't it? The whole time he'd been Talon, been unmade at that bastard's hands into a thing to be used, he'd had the memory of when he'd been a person, when he'd had a mother who loved him. Had somebody _he_ loved.

Of course, loving her had hurt, too. So much, the whole time she was dying and medicating away the pain of it with whatever she could get her hands on, but he'd never stopped. Even once she was dead and he tried not to think about her too much. Even when _Jason_ was almost dead, replaced by Talon, and he'd almost never had to try. He'd still had that, tucked away in a corner of his mind, waiting to be prodded out of hiding by the sight of a mother standing between him and her kid, or the wild sincerity of _everyone deserves to be free_.

And now…

" _Ess_ ," said Jokester, contemplatively sibilant, and the letter expanded in Jason's mind in the sudden, sharp realization that it stood for a person; a real, actual _person._

"Do you think she's still alive?" he heard himself say.

Harley looked startled, and J blinked. And Jason was more surprised than anyone, seriously. To hear that almost-hopeful note in his voice, when he'd been so close to freaking out a minute ago. To realize he was able to think about whoever _S_ was as something he might be gaining. But it was practically a conditioned response, at this point, to look for the bright side in everything J said, because he was so hung up on positivity that nine times out of ten that was what he meant.

Jokester and Harlequin traded looks again, Harley's tiny fingers clenching and unclenching in her mask the way they did when she was uncertain.

"No reason she shouldn't be," she said cautiously after a second.

No reason.

Except that she'd given him up. And if he'd killed her being born, well, he knew _that_ wasn't his fault, or hers either. Just one of those things. But if she was alive, why else would she do that, give her baby to its daddy's wife? Because she didn't want him, or because she figured they could take better care of him. She was probably a whore.

Jason's mouth twisted with something like a smile at that, because hadn't they called him a whore's son back then? It'd never been true, though he knew he and Catherine had both looked at that trade sidelong and thought _maybe, if it gets much worse…._ But she'd been worn down to grey skin over bones by the time things got that desperate, and no one would have bought. And now it looked like maybe it'd been true after all.

Well, now he _had_ to know.

"Jason?" said Harley softly.

"I'm okay," he answered absently, turning back to the table.

Owlman's training wasn't all obedience and pain management and the best way to sever any given body part in one blow. There were critical thinking skills in there; Talon was _designed_ to operate semi-independently at need, even if Jason's leash had never been as long as his predecessor's. That meant he needed tactical flexibility, and that meant being able to do things like analyzing data and evaluating courses of action. He'd had most of a year of involvement in wacky vigilante schemes since then. And Jason wasn't _stupid._

So of course his attention fell on the obvious resource, lying discarded in the pile of useless items without sentimental value: Willis Todd's little black address book.

Knowing Harley and J were keeping a furtive eye on him, he picked it up again. Flipped to S—that level of organization felt weird, even if it was imposed by the format of the address book, but then Jason hadn't actually known his father that well, when you came down to it. He'd never had his _life_ in order and the apartment had always been a little chaotic, but maybe with small personal things he'd always had a system. He'd been really strict about his morning coffee ritual.

There were three women's names. Obviously this wasn't all the mom candidates, but it was a place to start.

"Sandra Wu-San," he read aloud. "Why is that name fam— _my loser Dad knew Shiva?_ "

" _Really?_ " Jokester squawked, and craned over his shoulder. "No way."

Jason shook his head in agreement. Willis Todd had been a _rent-a-minion_. Smallest of small-time crooks. Before that, he'd had some kind of factory job. How would he even have been on conversational terms with the most dangerous mortal woman in four continents? But there she was, two phone numbers and a mailing address—all long out of date by now, of course. "Could just be a coincidence," he pointed out. "Sandra isn't that rare a name, or Wu." San was rarer, and the combination even more limiting, but Asian-Americans could do the hyphenated marriage thing, too. And wind up with much less stupidly long names than stuff like Hasterfrau-Walters when they did.

Of course, if Jason was one half to a quarter Asian he'd expect it would show more. Probably.

_Probably._

"You heard where she is now?" he asked. He'd think about the other two names once he'd dealt with the one he _recognized._

"She was in Star giving the Black Bow trouble again, last I heard," Harley volunteered. "Since she, ah, avenged her sister she's been moving around a little less."

"I'll call around," J announced, straightening himself out the way he did sometimes so all his limbs stretched and popped at the joints and he got about three inches taller, and jerking his chin so his ponytail lashed decisively. "Somebody has to have her current number."

Jason blinked. Yeah, that was…a lot more normal than tracking her down and asking her personally, wasn't it. Plus less embarrassing if she wasn't. _Come on, Todd,_ he said to himself, with a little shake. _Snap out of it. This isn't an intel-gathering operation. You're not going to hunt her down and interrogate her._

_You are not Talon._

Talon wouldn't care about things like birth mothers, though. So maybe he'd be a steadying influence right now.

Jason wasn't weak enough to need him, dammit.

He shook himself.

"Now?" he asked, torn between unspeakable relief at something to _do_ and a desire to stomp on the brakes to give himself time to catch up. Tucked the little book into his coat pocket for now, self-consciously.

J's eyes flicked to it, and then up to Jason, but said nothing before he turned, snagged the cordless phone off the windowsill and held it up. "You wanna call?"

"You think this number is still good?" Jason asked dubiously. It was at least ten years old, and Shiva wasn't the kind of person who stayed put. He knew about her, because Owlman considered her a person of interest; she'd been hunting the serial killer martial artist Richard Dragon for years before she'd broken his neck in a public duel in Nanjing, and made a lot of other enemies along the way. Hadn't slowed down any since.

"We could try, I guess," Jokester shrugged. "But I meant you can make all the calls on this, if you want. It's your show."

His issue meant his show? Jason felt a little bit of smile well up; even if he died for it tomorrow, he was glad he'd ditched the Owl. "Nah, it's cool. I'm delegating the research phoning to you. You got the contacts."

J laughed. "That I do. Okay, Shiva, Star City…it's like four pm on the West Coast now…"

He called his best contact in Star, but they didn't have a number or location for Shiva. They said they'd keep J posted. No one picked up at the next number, and J pursed his lips. "Forget working by city; this could take all night. Trying somebody Shiva's worked with a few times," he announced, and dialed once more.

Jason tried not to fidget while they waited for the call to connect, and then J broke into a telephone kind of smile.

"Hey, Len? This is the Jokester…because it's polite to identify yourself on the phone?" J huffed a few seconds later, in response to whatever his contact said to that. "My voice isn't _that_ distinctive, what do…. Oh, now, that's just _cold_.

"Of course you've heard it before. Classics are classic for a reason. What, you want me to be all ' _Mister Snart?'_ Excusez-moi, Monsieur _Snart,_ j'm'apelle—yeah, well, I like _my_ name, too. Is _so_ a real name.

"Fine, _Captain_." He laughed, the warm kind that still sometimes made Jason's skin prickle when it was aimed at him. He wondered if it made Captain Cold uncomfortable, that his Gotham counterpart sounded so pleased to be bickering with him. People usually liked J eventually, but sometimes they edged away before he had the time to wear them down and prove there wasn't a price for kindness.

Well. Not one Jason had encountered yet, at least, unless it was near-terminal annoyance.

"Looks like that's going okay," said Harley.

Jason had almost forgotten she was here. He tuned out Jokester's phone call—either he'd get the number or he wouldn't; there was nothing for Jason to listen for—and hitched up an agreeing smile. "Yup," he agreed.

"So…Ed and I will get started with researching the other two in the meantime. If you want, JJ?" Harley reached out as if to pet his hair, and then stopped, withdrew her hand. Smiled as if nothing had happened.

He nodded and said something along the lines of thanks, dug out the address book and gave her the information she needed to go rope Enigma and his computers into this, because he couldn't think of a good reason to _not_ , but he had trouble pushing her out of his mind even after she left the room.

What had _that_ been about? J touched him all the time, and Ella, and Harley had done a good bit of it too, though not usually so… He wasn't sure what word he wanted to use, but she didn't usually _pet_ him. But she'd _never_ done that before. Aborted a gesture.

She'd put an arm around his shoulders and held on after finding him retching up his guts in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Held his hand the one time he'd broken down crying. Harley had stuck with him even when he tried to drive her away, which he'd done a lot those early weeks, when he'd had time to move on from 'incredulous euphoria' to 'blank terror' and most of the Circus were still treating him like a feral thing and trying to make sure no one was ever alone with him. Even on the day when he'd talked about the relative merits of garroting and slitting throats with all the nasty detail he could think of for forty minutes straight, waiting for her to snap, she'd just…been there.

When he'd been coated in blood after they sprung him the second time, she'd still touched him. But not now.

Maybe she just figured if he had a mom somewhere, he didn't need her anymore, so she didn't have to bother with him. With someone who'd hurt her and hers as many times as he had, with his fucked-upness and crazy. She had her own kid. This was always just temporary.

Some kids on the street used to talk about old foster-parents. The shitty ones, of course, the ones that made them pull up stakes and try to make it on their own, but sometimes the good ones, the ones they'd hoped or been promised would be 'forever families.' Some of them had been bitter, about the lie, but a lot of them had only been mad at the system that made them move on, not the families, and they'd sounded…

Jason called on Talon to make sure his face didn't give him away. It was easy, and no one would be suspicious; he wore Talon's face a lot by accident, when he wasn't paying attention. Maybe he should stop trying to break himself of that. It was safer, after all. Not broadcasting. Even without Owlman breathing over your shoulder, feelings could be exploited; why should he make that easy?

Part of Jason wanted to interrupt J and run after Harley and tell them to forget about it. The birth certificate didn't matter. Whoever gave birth to him hadn't wanted him then; why would she want him now? Why would knowing be worth even a small effort or minor risk?

But he couldn't make them want to keep him here, and maybe she _would_ want him. Maybe she _had,_ even, from the start, but thought he'd be safer with Willis. And Catherine? They'd been married already when he was born, and he couldn't remember ever not being theirs, so he must've gone into their custody pretty early. Catherine used to talk about changing his diapers; it would be weird if that was a lie.

It made sense that she'd sometimes forgotten to feed him, when he wasn't even hers. When he was the product of an _affair._ But it didn't make sense that she'd remembered all his birthdays until the last one. It didn't make sense that she'd never hit him or cursed him or—he knew parents, he knew stepparents. His mom had been kind of weak, and he'd hated her sometimes, but he'd loved her, and she'd—she'd acted like she loved him. Given him everything she had. He would never have walked away as long as she was alive.

Never, ever. Because she'd been his. She'd been one of the only real things he'd ever had. The pain and the rage and the determination to survive, and Mom. _His_ mom. His.

He was so fucking sick of losing things, especially ones he'd already thought were as lost as they could get.

"Blue Jay. Hey. Little bird."

Jason blinked. Jokester was looking at him, phone in hand, wearing his serious face. "Hey," he grinned, when he saw Jason looking back. "Spaced out, there. Your face stop working again?"

"You are a massive dick," Jason informed him. Without reactivating his face.

J laughed. "Yeah, well. Practice." He waggled the phone. "Got the number. Worked as of last week. So you want to call up Shiva, or wait till we know a little more?"

Jason licked his lips, thinking. If they dug around enough, they might not need to cold-call anyone. On the other hand, if they called her and she was it, then the uncertainty would be over, bam, just like that. Issue resolved.

The impulse to hold back and gather all relevant data so the situation didn't get out of his control was there, and strong, but it was Talon's. Red Hood was part of the Circus, and he took unnecessary risks without being ordered to, and he wasn't afraid of talking to people. "Dial," he said.

Jokester grinned. He looked proud enough that Jason thought maybe he knew exactly what struggle had gone on there, but maybe all he knew was Jason was being brave. "I hear and obey," he chuckled, and hammered in eleven digits with a flourish before passing the handset over to Jason.

Phones made him uncomfortable. He'd never said anything, but he was pretty sure Harley had noticed—it was something about the sound of a mechanized voice in his ear, he was pretty sure, the way Owlman had perched on his shoulder and pulled his strings through the earpiece even when they were apart. That, and having to rely on just words and machine-distorted tones of voice to read people, without all the nonverbals to tip him off to the subtext and the lies. He punched the speakerphone button with his thumb as the ringer at the other end of the line spun out.

What were the odds Shiva would even pick up? She moved around a lot. They didn't even know if this was a cell phone number; she was a serious martial artist, she was probably all traditionalist, would be five to five hundred years behind on any given technology. _And_ wouldn't want to be tracked; Owlman couldn't be the only one who could do that trick with cells. He'd probably get an answering machine any second now.

He knew he was staring at the ringing phone in his hand like it was a live grenade he wasn't allowed to throw, but he didn't want the first thing he said to a potential Mom to be in Talon's voice, and that was the only way he could have stopped.

On the seventh ring, there was the rattle of a corded phone coming out of its cradle, and the moments of silence that it would spend passing from there to someone's ear seemed to stretch for ages.

"Hello?" came a clipped voice—deep for a woman's, without any real accent, and standoffish without being wary.

"Sandra Wu-San?" he checked. He only sounded a little tense, really. And he didn't sound like Talon.

"Who's asking?"

"This is the Red Hood, calling out of Gotham."

She seemed to take a few seconds to think about that. It wouldn't be strange if she hadn't heard there was a new one; he'd only been active for a matter of months, and hadn't been causing that many waves, since he was mostly working within the established patterns of the Circus, but she must have after all, because she didn't challenge the name, or ask him to prove it. "This is Shiva. What did you want?"

Not the secret identity type, huh. Might as well cut to the chase.

"Do you have any children?" Jason asked, feeling his heart pick up in spite of his training. He could do worse for a mom. He really could. Shiva was a little… _out there_ , but she was good people. She had pretty good excuses for not raising her own kid, as many people as wanted her dead. She was strong. And she was just bloody-handed enough herself that maybe she could accept about Talon.

Hell, if she was his mom she'd probably be willing to train him. Then he'd be _better_ and have less of the Owl in his style.

Shiva was silent for three torturous seconds. "You've found her?" she asked. Her voice was so flat he couldn't tell whether she was homicidal or indifferent or wrestling with hope like he'd been a second ago, but his stomach knotted up so much at the word _her_ that he was glad he'd opted for speakerphone, because J swooped in and took over for him.

"Sorry," said the clown, plucking the handset from Jason's numb fingers. "Sorry, no. We had a lead a kid might be yours, but it's a boy. You're missing a girl?"

"She'd be ten this year," Shiva confirmed, woodenly. There was even less tone than there'd been before, and Jason could tell now that it was a shield, the same way he kept using his training, and she really would have been the perfect Real Mom. Fuck everything. "Her father walked away with her while I was still bedridden after the birth."

Jokester grimaced, showing all his teeth in a deeply sincere expression he wouldn't have used face-to-face with anyone but family because it looked too utterly freaky on him. It worked on the phone, though, practically pouring sympathy into the mic. "Aw, _man_. I'm sorry. We'll see what we can do, wow, why didn't we know about this? Who's the kidnapper?"

Jason knew he should care as much about this missing girl as J evidently did, and probably he would care, some, later, but right now everything he had was going into crashing. He didn't get an awesome and slightly terrifying new mom out of this. He still didn't have anywhere to go if he used up his welcome here. _Maybe_ one of the others—who probably wouldn't conveniently be in the address books of people Jokester knew—would turn out to be his original mother, but that didn't mean she'd be any use, or have any interest in trying.

Gamble, failed. He flipped open the little black book to 'S' again. Sharmin Rosen. Sheila Haywood. Or bust.

Well, or try to get into Gotham City records and find out what his birth certificate had said before the damage, without attracting Owlman's attention. Wayne had never had the slightest interest in Jason's background—he'd been an orphaned nothing, born from dirt, as far as the bastard had cared; he probably thought that made for more impressionable clay—but he'd love a way to strike indirectly at the Red Hood. Jason wasn't about to expose his mom to danger just to find out who she was.

**Author's Note:**

> ...so it turns out that Shiva's is yet another name I'm using an outdated spelling for. Still don't care. Her origin story is one of the few that's been retconned repeatedly over the years and managed to get less coherent and more offensive every time. In this universe, Richard Dragon actually murdered her sister. (Uhm, and now Cass exists. Yay?)
> 
> Mrs. Walker and the contents of the cardboard box are taken straight from _A Death in the Family_ , a story which I cannot seem to stop referencing. Batman and Robin actually _did_ interrogate Shiva under truth serum. (She denied having any offspring, which retroactively proves they were using truth serum wrong because Cass.) Nobody will ever know how Willis Todd had Lady Shiva's contact information.
> 
> ^^ Captain Cold stayed Captain Cold because I like superheroes called Captain Something. And 'Leonard Snart' is really fun to say.


End file.
